The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1887-10-01
LIVING ON A DIME A DAY.
It Can be Done, and Perhaps 1t Woult
be Better If Moro People Did 1t.


be Better If Moro People Did 1t.
How to Live and Thrive on Dime
per Day. may stand as the text for this
talk. 1t certainly can be done and,
though the experiment may be uninviting,
it is certain that good health is nearer
akin to the simplest diet than to the
costliest.
Now as to the 1aboring man and his
proteine. Tell him that three-fourths of
his weight is water and that to restore
the days waste he has to take food, three
fourths of which must be water and the
remainder flesh forming, heat giving and
bone making substances, and he will
understand the case better. Give him a
table of food, analysed to show just how
much heat giving, flesh forming and
mineral matter there is in each food and
he will soon take as deep an interest in
what he eats because of its worth TO him
as because of its taste. When he finds
out, as he can in half an hour, that only
twenty -four parts in every 100 of butch
er's meat count as flesh formers, the rest
being water, but that from seventy-fi
to ninety parts out of every 100 in dried
peas, beans, oat and wheat meals and
cheese are nutritious and only ten to
twenty five parts waste water, he from
that moment begins to use his common
sense in feeding as he does in earning his
living. The popular rule is never pay
any heed to the feeding value of our diet;
let us cultivate a glorious ignorance of
the purpose of foods, and go in might and
main for palate ticklers and devil take
the dyspepsia. Pity he doesn't.
just fact or two as appetizers. The
great Peninsular and Oriental Steamship
company employ East Indian coolies to
do the hardest work on their steamers
because they are stronger, healthier and
stand the climate better than English
men, and because being meat eaters
their diet costs onIy six cents per day.
There are miners in the English coal pits,
the hardest workers in the land, who
have not eaten any kind of meat for
years. / am not vegetarian, yet | ex-
perimented for one whole year without
tasting flesh or gravy in any form, and
all the time my health was perfect and
my weight increased The dock porters
of Constantinople carry heavier burdens,
$50 pounds and upward, more easily
than the laborers of England OF America,
yet their main diet is bread and figs, and
yet they are teetotal and vegetarian. The
laborers in Spain live chiefly on bread
and onions and are marvelously strong.
knew an eminent lady who, for forty
years, had never tasted meat. She was
marvel of mental and physical strength.
Another author friend kept his health
and his average weight of 100 pounds on
diet that never included meat, the
average cost of his food being only six
cents per day. Another, well known
literary man who looked as beefy as a
butcher, was, when last l met him, in
his eighth year of strict abstinence from
flesh. Another friend, hard literary
worker, has been practically life long
vegetarian, but he looks too shriveled up
to be a champion specimen.
What would be good diet for those
who do not need to study their purses
yet who would like simple, healthy and
enjoyable dietary? To such I would say
drop the heavy meat breakfast right
away. Not that meat is bad, but it is not
the best to start the day on. 1t distends
the stomach, indisposes us for headwork
and often leads to that other downright
mischievous stupidity, the II o'clock
beer or cocktail. The second evil is taken
to cure the first, as if two black eyes are
better than one. Bread (not the spoiled
white stuff, but the natural dark colored
wheat as ground, tea or cocoa, eggs and
the hundred and one non-fesh dishes,
with little fish and as much fruit as you
like. That's model meal as experience
will prove.
Talking Of fish, the more the better.
Pound for pound it is as nutritious as
flesh, though it doesn't seem to fill us so
fully, and its chemical value is far above
that of meats. When / have extra hard
brain work to do, say an average of
twelve or fourteen hours for two or three
weeks at stretch, I knock off meats en-
tirely and eat all the fish / can. Result,
perfect health and strength and no head
aches.
For dinner, fish. soups Il am not ex-
cluding meat, though soups can be made
without it that taste just the same and
are quite as good every way, puddings,
dessert. If any one cares to prove for
himself how little the flesh dishes on his
dinner table are necessary to him, let
him just reverse the courses, beginning
with the fruit, then cheese and crackers,
the puddings, etc. / warrant he will
turn up his nose at the meat when he
comes to it, and he won't miss it the
least.
A horse is almost as strong, swift,
healthy and handsome as a two-legged
man, and they both have the same inter
nal machinery; the one eats beef and en-
joys dyspepsia, the other avoids it and
fourishvs. Ten cents worth of wheat,
oatmeal. rice, fruit, battermilk, bread,
cheese, onions OF portions of several of
these will enable man to do his Or
binary days work at least as well as any
other assortment of food he can buy for
$1.-Richmond (Va.) Dispatch.